Rep. Ro Khanna went on "Real Time with Bill Maher" this weekend to sing the praises of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He brought up Mamdani's speech at the Knicks championship parade as evidence of inspired leadership. Maher wasn't having it.
"Who gives a s–t about the Knicks? He's the mayor of New York," Maher fired back.
The exchange, which aired on the June 22 episode, escalated quickly after Khanna tried to frame Mamdani as a unifying political figure. Maher cut him off with the kind of bluntness usually reserved for this side of the aisle: "He pals around with terrorists." Maher then went further, referencing Mamdani's wife, Rama Duwaji, and her social media activity.
"Well, it doesn't make me forget that his wife loved the Oct. 7 attack," Maher said. He was referring to a February 2024 incident in which Duwaji reportedly liked a social media post that characterized reports of sexual assault by Hamas on October 7 as a "mass hoax." That's the first lady of America's largest city endorsing conspiracy theories about a terrorist massacre.
Maher also brought up Mamdani's appearance in a photograph with Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has been linked to extremist rhetoric, and referenced a Brooklyn campaign rally where the mayor reportedly called AIPAC and its supporters "monsters." None of this was news to anyone paying attention during the mayoral race. But hearing it from the mouth of a liberal comedian on HBO gave it a different kind of weight.
Khanna's defense was revealing. When Maher asked if he considered Mamdani "a great one," Khanna responded: "I do, I mean, did you see his Knicks speech?" A basketball parade speech. That's the evidence. When Maher pressed on the terrorism associations, Khanna pivoted to offering to broker a meeting: "I'll talk to him." Maher responded, "We ask people like that, Ro, they never come."
This is the corner the Democratic Party has painted itself into. Mamdani isn't some fringe city council member from a safe Brooklyn district anymore — he's the mayor of New York City. The Democratic Socialists of America wing went from protest marches to running the five boroughs. And when a sitting congressman goes on national television and can't muster a single substantive defense beyond a sports parade, the party's moderate wing isn't just losing the argument. It's forfeiting.
Khanna is supposed to be one of the reasonable ones. Silicon Valley Democrat. Business-friendly. The guy corporate donors point to when they want to pretend the party hasn't gone off the rails. And his best pitch for the mayor of the nation's largest city was that the man gave a fun speech about basketball.
Meanwhile, Maher — a man who voted for Biden, donated to Democrats, and spent years mocking Republicans — is the one pointing out that the mayor's wife appears to have endorsed October 7 atrocity denial and that Mamdani's social circle includes people with ties to extremist rhetoric. When a liberal talk show host has to do the opposition research for the opposition party, the party doesn't have a messaging problem. It has a product problem.
The moderate Democrats used to at least pretend to push back against the DSA crowd. Now they go on television and sell them as inspirational leaders because they gave a good speech at a basketball game. That's not a coalition. That's a hostage situation where the hostages have started cheering for the kidnappers.